Today in History

1867: President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

1898: Fighting in the Spanish-American War came to an end.

1939: The classic MGM movie musical “The Wizard of Oz,” starring Judy Garland, had its world premiere at the Strand Theater in Oconomowoc three days before opening in Hollywood. Oconomowoc was apparently chosen to test the film’s appeal to Middle Americans.

1944: During World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England.

1953: The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.

1985: The world’s worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people. Four people survived.

1988: The controversial movie “The Last Temptation of Christ,” directed by Martin Scorsese, opened in nine cities despite objections by some who felt the film was sacrilegious.

1994: In baseball’s eighth work stoppage since 1972, players went on strike rather than allow team owners to limit their salaries. The strike ended in April 1995.

2009: Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., heard a fresh chorus of taunts from opponents of health care reform at Penn State University; Specter said they were “not necessarily representative of America” but should be heard.

2013: James “Whitey” Bulger, the feared Boston mob boss who became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives, was convicted in a string of 11 killings and dozens of other gangland crimes, many of them committed while he was said to be an FBI informant. Bulger is now serving a life sentence in federal prison.

Thought for Today: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” — Rene Descartes, French philosopher (1596-1650).